Ethical Theories and Decision-Making Models

Determine ethical theories and decision-making models appropriate for healthcare providers to use for providing a safe, quality healthcare experience for the patient  Analyze the role of professional regulation, the standard of care, and codes of ethics in determining healthcare providers’ wide-ranging accountability to self, their profession, their patients, and the public 

Prompt In this project, you will analyze a court case involving medical malpractice. Using your analysis of the case, you will address the facts pertaining to the medical standard of care, breach of care, and causation. Further, you will use the facts from the original case to identify an ethics issue, determine an ethical theory that would help provide a safe and quality healthcare experience for the patient, apply a clinician–patient shared decision-making model, and augment or vary the facts of the case to change the outcome. 

You will use the following case to analyze for Final Project I: 

 Surgery: Iturralde v. Hilo Medical Center USA 

Specifically, your case study must address the following critical elements: 

I. Introduction: A. Summarize the selected case, including information on the stakeholders involved, the problem, and the time period the incident occurred. 

II. Medical Malpractice Component: In this section, you will evaluate the case to address the legal components, the malpractice policies similar to this case, and the standard of care given to the patient and how it was breached. Then, you will draw connections to how this malpractice case impacted stakeholders and healthcare consumers outside of the case. A. Explain the key legal components of the case, including the nature of the issue and the rules that applied. B. Determine relevant malpractice policies in place for addressing the issues within the case. C. Analyze the malpractice case for the standard of care provided to the victim. Be sure to apply what the law states about standard of care to support whether or not it was breached in the case. D. Analyze how the malpractice case would impact healthcare consumers from different cultural backgrounds. For example, would this case have a similar impact on a person from a culture different from the one in the case? How could this incident change the views of these healthcare consumers toward the healthcare system? E. Assess the malpractice case for accountability based on its severity. To what extent was the healthcare provider held accountable? 

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III. Ethical Component: In this section, you will evaluate the case to identify the specific ethical issues and determine ethical theories and shared decision- making models that would help resolve the issue and provide a safe, quality healthcare experience. Then, you will propose and defend ethical guidelines for healthcare providers to follow in order to avoid future incidents. A. Describe the ethical issues that led to the malpractice case and explain why the issues are credited with causing the incident. Support your response with research and relevant examples from the case. B. Describe an ethical theory that would help resolve the issue and provide a safe, quality healthcare experience for the patient. Support your response with research and relevant examples from the case. C. Select a physician–patient shared decision-making model and explain how it would provide a safe, quality healthcare experience for the patient D. Propose ethical guidelines that would have helped prevent the incident and would help the organization prevent future incidents. E. Defend how your proposed ethical guidelines will hold healthcare providers accountable to themselves, their profession, their patients, and the public. 

II. Recommendations: In this section, you will utilize the knowledge you gained from your malpractice and ethical analyses to recommend and defend strategies that would help improve medical practices and avoid future liability. A. Recommend preventative strategies the healthcare provider could implement to avoid liability in the future. B. Defend how your recommended preventative strategies would assist the healthcare provider in avoiding liability and provide a safe, quality healthcare experience for the patient.